The CAN-Do Approach

May 01, 2007

Users and the environment frequently place competing demands on water to meet a wide range of objectives. How water resources managers response to these demands is monitored by a complex mixture of allowable actions, goals and barriers that must properly evaluated and integrated in order to come up with a satisfactory mix of benefits. Our ability to control runoff is limited. We can build reservoirs to hold water for later use, control water use and construct flood control facilities. We can also change the way existing facilities are operated. But, we still can't stop (or start) the rain.

How do you operate water supply systems, such as dams, reservoirs, canals, pipelines and water treatment plants? How do you use the available water? What do you build? Even though the range of things to do is limited, the number of different combinations of these things is very large, and finding a combination that satisfies all users is often a daunting task.

HydroLogics, a water resources management consulting firm, has developed a process for conducting consensus building negotiations -- a process that, more often than not, delivers win-win solutions and benefits ranging into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

The HydroLogics process uses its OASIS simulation software -- with patented logic routines -- to facilitate computer-aided negotiation (CAN) sessions. This process, along with the software, have been or are being used to resolve water management issues in South Florida (Everglades), the Delaware Basin, the New York City Water Supply System, the Washington Metropolitan Area, the Roanoke River in North Carolina, the Kansas River, the Las Vegas Valley and many other places. It was a vital factor in the development of several new water institutions, including the Cooperative Operations Section of the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin, the Kansas River Assurance District and the Southern Nevada Water Authority.

A small, operations-based increased in the effectiveness of existing facilities can provide enormous benefits.

The CAN Process

The CAN process shares much with mediation, but the "mediators" often take a much more active role in determining the outcome than most are comfortable with, and do so with less clearly defined and agreed upon procedures. The CAN process starts by identifying performance measures (PMs), which reflect the parties' interests and can be used to compare alternative solutions. Most PMs are not textual, but are graphs, charts, pictures, checklists and other highly visual, well-defined representations of the multiple objectives. They allow parties to distinguish better from worse when comparing objectives and must be based on some reproducible evaluation method. The process proceeds by obtaining consensus on the data and methods to be used in the evaluation.

This is followed by a compilation of alternatives. Most often, operational and other non-structural alternatives are at least as important as physical alternatives. This is because the installed base of facilities is usually much larger than proposed new facilities. Thus, a small, operations-based increase in the effectiveness of existing facilities can provide enormous benefits.

The design of the actual analytical techniques is the next step in the process. OASIS software is a powerful water resources simulation engine for generating long- and short-run evaluations; it also serves to unify the evaluation of surface water, groundwater, water quality, fisheries management and other analytical tools through its standardized run-time interface for linking in "side" models. This interface lets the models run together, "in parallel," and to communicate back and forth at each time step.

OCL deals both with multiple operating constraints, which must be met, and multiple operating targets, which operators try to achieve and which they must "balance" when they all cannot be achieved simultaneously.

The patented Operations Control Language (OCL) used in OASIS allows the user to describe operating policies to the underlying OASIS model. This is crucial to the success of the analytical portion of the process. The syntax and keywords of OCL are simple, mnemonic, and reflect the ways in which actual operators tend to describe operating policies. OCL deals with both multiple operating constraints, which must be met, and multiple operating targets, which operators try to achieve and which they must "balance" when they cannot all be achieved simultaneously. As a result, most people knowledgeable in water resources can easily read and understand OCL, and this makes the analysis much more transparent to users. In other words, OCL was designed for water people -- not computer programmers.

Models running in parallel are linked through OCL, which allows users to write rules that depend on the parameters simulated in side models (e.g., rules based on water temperature or quality, rules based on provided habitat for migratory species at the time of arrival, rules based on highly differentiated water demands, etc.). OCL also allows the users to set parameters inside the side models (e.g., the rate and location of groundwater pumping for the current time step). Most importantly for the CAN process, OASIS with OCL makes it possible to modify alternatives and produce new results quickly.

During a CAN session, the HydroLogics staff plays a very proactive role. They serve as a human interface between the parties to the dispute and the computer, and serves an engineering design function, as well. Guidance for maintaining neutrality while being proactive is grounded in multi-objective theory, and recognizes that values come into play in the choice of objectives and in the allocation of benefits. Therefore, the HydroLocis staff are very careful not to engage in making choices in either of these areas. The staff objective in engineering design is to create alternatives where each objective is fulfilled as much as possible without reducing the achievement of other objectives. Such alternatives are called "non-inferior" in multi-objective parlance. The choice of which of the non-inferior alternatives to pick is entirely the province of the disputing parties.

OASIS with OCL

The OASIS software that makes CAN possible is not some fully generalized simulation package, but is specifically designed to address water-resources related problems. Characterized by ease and flexibility of use, OASIS "knows" the basics of how water supply systems work and automatically handles such things as: conservation of mass, reservoir characteristics, channel capacities and minimum flows, annual patterns, time series inputs, etc. Standard input tables are provided for such items, and this speeds up the development of analytical tools.

Win-Win Solutions

The CAN process is very useful for resolving many complex water resources disputes. Because of its early and thorough focus on PMs and because it resolves data and scientific methods disputes prior to any evaluation of alternatives, it creates a common basis for evaluating and illuminating the pros and cons of alternatives. This is extremely important in developing the consensus required for non-judicial resolution of disputes.